The Deathless Club

Zane Joly

          Eirik heard a knock on his apartment door. He considered not answering it, but figured he might as well and went to get it anyway. Standing in front of him was a thirteen year old girl with jet black hair. She was alone, and wasn’t wearing a girl scout uniform. She was looking at a watch.

“Eight seconds to answer the door,” said the girl, “Pretty good. Shows limited apathy to day to day random occurrences.”

“What?” asked Eirik. Before he could stop her, the girl ducked under his arm and walked into his apartment. “Hey!” he objected, but she ignored him.

The girl looked around her with an analytical eye, taking in everything. She saw the gray couch, the window showing the Seattle skyline, the bookshelf against one wall, and the several paintings of natural landscapes hanging on the opposite wall. “Well,” she said, “You do at least some cleaning, which is good.”

“Get out of my home,” growled Eirik. She should have been scared. He was over a foot and a half taller than her, and was a powerfully built man with a not naturally kind face. But instead the girl seemed to ignore him, continuing her scan of the room.

“Look, I don’t want to hurt you-” began Eirik.

“That’s good,” interrupted the girl, “Caring about the life of others is a good sign. Or maybe you just don’t want to get arrested. More than a few years in prison could be problematic for you.”

Eirik blinked. Did she…? No, that wasn’t possible, she must have meant something else. “Alright,” said Eirik, “You’re leaving. Now.” He moved forward and tried to grab the girl by the arm, but she stepped back.

“Do not touch me,” said the girl, and there was nothing juvenile in how she said it. There was a threat in those eyes. Eirik could see her settling into an action-ready stance. He wasn’t much of a fighter himself, but he could tell she was.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“Nimita,” the girl answered, “Of the Taino. And you are Eirik Grimstad. I’m here on behalf of the Deathless Club. We would like to offer you an invitation as an immortal individual.”

Eirik blinked. “What?” he asked.

“Often newbies find it easiest if a personal explanation is given,” said Nimita, “So I’ll give one. I’m five hundred and twenty four years old. When I was a little girl, I lived in the Bahamas, the island of Bimini to be specific. One day when I was twelve, I found a magic spring. Europeans called it the fountain of youth. When you drink its water, aging can be slowed or even reversed. Long story short, I fell in, and I drowned. The fountain’s powers were drained away into me and I have looked like this for over half a millennium. How about you?”

The man took a deep breath, trying to regain his bearings. “I’m… somewhere around three hundred years old,” said Eirik, “I’m from Norway. It’s complicated and I don’t remember all of it, but I think I was looking for my nephew. I got lost. Then, I found a man strolling along, unaffected by the cold. He was eating golden apples, tossing the cores behind him. When he spotted me, he vanished, but he left the cores behind. I was hungry and cold and tired, so I ate the cores. I blacked out and when I woke up, the cold didn’t hurt as much. After a few years I found out I don’t age either.” After a moment, Eirik added, “I’m not a viking. I know I’m a big immortal Norwegian guy with a beard, but the viking age ended centuries before I was born.”

“No worries,” said Nimita, “I get it. I’ve had someone ask if I was the ghost of Pocahontas.”

“I didn’t know there were others like me,” Eirik said.

“Yeah, lots of us think that,” said the little girl who was apparently two hundred years older than him, “But no. One of us shows up on average once every seventy years or so, but it varies. We come from all sorts of things. Touched by curses, turned into undead, objects that came to life, some kind of divine shenanigan, the list goes on. But, as I’m sure you’ve realized, immortality can be rough.”

For Eirik, it certainly had been. Everyone he’d ever known, his entire family, had all died long ago. When people saw he didn’t age, they’d accused him of being touched by the devil and tried to kill him. Later in history, they wanted to put him somewhere and study him. And perhaps worst of all was the boredom. Eirik just couldn’t find enough things to do. Everything had gotten repetitive. He’d tried to solve the problem by moving around, but even that didn’t help anymore. 

“You seem to be doing relatively well,” said Nimita, “Apathy is a big problem with immortals, and you don’t seem as badly affected by it as many we find.” She gave another look around the room. “More dust here than would be ideal. Like I said, cleaning is good. Participating in day to day rituals helps keep you grounded.”

“How did you find me?” asked Eirik.

“I think it’s best to say we have our ways and leave it at that,” said Nimita.

“Who is ‘we’?”

“I’m from the Deathless Club,” explained the girl, “An organization of ageless people like yourself. We combat the difficulties of immortality, and help the undying feel alive.”

“So you’re like a nursing home for immortals?” Eirik asked cautiously.

Nimita frowned. “Well,” she said, “Technically, we are similar to some retirement homes, but I find it so depressing to think of it like that. We’re not waiting to die, that’s the whole point. I think you can agree that one of the big drawbacks of immortality is that all your loved ones die around you.”

Eirik cleared his throat and looked away. He usually tried not to think too much about that. “I suppose,” he said.

“Yeah,” said the girl, “well, at the Deathless Club, all your friends are ageless, just like you. We understand. In fact, you’ll seem normal there. Our two main leaders, Galatea and Sikong, are a living statue and a ghost respectively.”

“Alright,” said Eirik, not really sure how to process that last bit, “So do you just sit around and talk?”

“Certainly not,” said Nimita, “We keep things interesting. The Deathless Club often organizes activities, the sorts of things people want to get off their bucket lists that lots of immortals don’t know exist or don’t get around to doing. Scuba diving, bungee jumping, things like that. We also teach people to exist in the modern day. Many immortals don’t keep up to date with technology. They taught me how to use a phone. I’ve seen a depressed immortal Roman senator light up when he put on a VR headset for the first time. We push you out of your comfort zone. For people like you and me, comfort zones can get very, very bad.”

“Did the club help you?” asked Eirik.

“They did,” said Nimita. After a moment’s pause she added, “You could say that my ‘comfort zone’ was killing. I got immortality not long before Europeans started to arrive at my home. It wasn’t a good few centuries for people like me. Over the years, I killed a lot of invaders. A lot. Some people I regret killing, most I don’t. When the Deathless Club found me, a hundred years ago, I was not in a good place. They did help me, and I’ve seen them help others.”

“Alright,” said Eirik, “Where does this club meet?”

“Oh, we move it around,” said Nimita, “But we’re currently located in Lagos, Nigeria. There’s a direct flight from here in Seattle to there later this afternoon. I’ve got a forged passport for you, don’t worry. Come on.”

“Wait, wait,” said Eirik, “Going now? I have to go to work tomorrow.”

“You’ve probably quit from dozens of jobs,” pointed out the other immortal, “What’s one more?”

“I…” Eirik looked back at his apartment. At the couch he had sat in for countless hours. At the artwork of landscapes he had grown bored of. At the window showing a skyline that he had watched change. At the bookshelf full of books he had read. At the thin layer of dust that covered much of it. It was boring, but he knew it. It was secure. If he stayed here, he knew what was going to happen, which was actually sort of the problem in the first place. At the same time, after centuries of loneliness, the idea of suddenly meeting more people like him was scary.

“You don’t die, Eirik,” said Nimita, “So why not live a little?”

Eirik nodded and headed after her out the door.